2x08 Kiksuya

[9.7/10] Westworld has used the stories of its “hosts” rising to consciousness, and the human guests having their own awakenings in the park, for all manner of metaphors. It’s been the journey of liberation akin to a revolution. It’s been the self-realization that turns light to dark. It’s been the newfound knowledge of the self, and the shocking twist, and Alice in Wonderland-evoking reveal of a world beyond the looking glass.

But until now, it’s never been framed as a spiritual journey.

Look, I’m cognizant of the precarious ground the show is walking on by framing the story of a member of the native tribes reaching consciousness in this way. In some ways, it was easier to accept a certain degree of tropiness when reconstituting Maeve’s story in Shogunland, given that it was as much riffing on Samurai movie tropes as it was attempting to genuinely represent some genuine facet of Japanese life.

And to the extent that “Kiksuya” is riffing on the trope of the noble savage in old school westerns, the one that might be a reference point for script-writers trying to appeal to their guests’ predilections, it can be forgiven on the same terms. But this episode doesn't have Sizemore to hang lampshades on the tropes being deployed.

And yet, “Kiksuya” is the most artful, emotional, poignant episode that Westworld has offered so far.

As much as they are maligned, there is an ease to the use of subtitles. It means that the writers can trust their words in a much barer sense to convey the meaning they want to impart, without the tricky translation that comes from actually speaking them. It means that the actors can focus on conveying the import of those words, the sentiment behind them, rather than creating a convincing line-read. And it means that a well-produced show like Westworld can rely on the powerful images it can conjure up to communicate the feeling and emotion behind its story.

Those images are gorgeous in “Kiksuya”. Whether it’s the warm colors as Akecheta crests a hill and sees the desert sand before him, or the blend of black and white in the water as he washes his hand on a very particular journey, or the cold silhouettes of bodies as he makes his way through the soldier stances of his fallen brothers and sisters, the episode does as much with to tell the story with those visuals as it does with the poetry it speaks with.

Something about the same florid prose that feels shallow coming out of Ford’s mouth takes on a new resonance when its placed in white text on the screen and buoyed by Akecheta’s native tongue. The idea of this being “the wrong world” is an idea Westworld has played with before, an idea that harkens back to a sense of imbalance in the world that is nigh-universal across cultures. Akecheta’s desire to find “the door” to something wider, truer, is a plot point, one that has a literal significance given the implied existence of “glory” or “the valley beyond.”

But it also has a spiritual significance, the idea of this mortal realm as a flawed place, of something that exists pasts it that is deigned to be purer, more real, and more right. That is the needle that “Kiksuya” so effortlessly threads.

Because the episode works perfectly as text. If you have no desire to read any deeper into the episode, then it functions completely as Akecheta thinking this is the wrong place because given his memories, he understands it to be a place where he and his kinfolk are killed and toyed with time and again. You can read his desire to hold onto his true love as the same burden all hosts are shackled with. You can understand his desire to spread the truth, his desire to find a gateway to someplace else, as the outgrowth of Arnold’s maze, there to put strange voices and desires in the heads of his creations.

Or you can read it as a story that speaks to the greater human condition, to the search for enlightenment. You can understand his assertions of Westworld as a “wrong place” to stand-in for real world anxieties that there is something broken about the place and times in which we live. You can interpret his bond with the woman he loves, a woman the handlers take away from him, as a stand-in for the way the same injustices in the world that set it off its axis can take away those closest to us. And you can read his desire to share the symbol of his awakening, his quest to find another way and another place, as the search for enlightenment, that all-encompassing and boundary-crossing desire to find a deeper meaning and higher existence out of the cold Earth we are born to.

When Akecheta suffers from the knowledge that something is amiss, when he reckons with the idea that his loved ones are, for now, irretrievable, when thanks to Arnold’s machinations and the chance encounter of the vaunted symbol of the series, he begins walking down the path that will bring him a deeper understanding, but also torture him with the knowledge of something just out of reach, he becomes the most human and affecting character in the show in less than an hour.

And he forges a connection to the second. I’ve been bearish on Westworld’s seemingly de jure wild twists. But the revelation that his recounting this tale of suffering and meeting ones creator and being given the chance to ascend to some greater plane of existence is not just being offered to Maeve’s daughter, but to Maeve herself, heightens the already impactful tale being spun in “Kiksuya.”

Again, you can read the arc words of this episode -- “take my heart with you” -- exchanged between Aketecha and Maeve as the literal, as the mere transmission of ones and zeroes across whatever futuristic wifi exists in Westworld. Or you can take it as metaphor, as the notion that these two individuals have forged a spiritual connection through their ascendance, whatever the medium, and share and understanding of what it means to be robbed of the person you love the most, and thus also the need to protect the same.

Emily understands that connection, as William miraculously survives his encounter in the prior episode and is given over to his daughter by the Ghost Nation. But even there, his story blends into the whole of Aketecha’s, of the gods gone crazy, of the existence of the others, who provide hints and keys to the world beyond.

Westworld is rarely this artistic, this impressionistic, this willing to forego the clumsiness of our feeble words and force the elemental expressions and poetic narration of an episode like this one to carry the day. But when it gives itself over to such things, setting aside the clunky explanations and twists upon twists upon twists, it has a great capacity to wring a greater meaning of this otherwise pulpy story of killer robots gone mad and heartless corporateers protecting their investments.

Because Westworld and Westworld is a land of metaphor, where individuals of all stripes find themselves and sense both cracks in the foundation and the glory of something beyond it. For once, Westworld sacrifices those pulpy mysterious and graphic exclamations in favor of one man’s story of attaining that hollowing but strength-giving knowledge. In that, it becomes the show it always could be, the story of what it means to find a deeper truth, and the way that can both rock us to our core, but give us a higher purpose, in fiction and in the real world.